CraigT82

Nice set of results well done, onwards and upwards! I'd ramp up the gain and bring down the exposures to help 'freeze the seeing'. Also leave the gamma alone set it to 50 (off) you can change it in post processing if you feel the need but you're handcuffing yourself by setting it in the capture.

Nice work Peter, conditions have been pants recently but still worth getting out there as you show.

Nice report 👍 I also take a lot of pleasure from just stepping out the back door with my 10x50 monocular (actually one half of a snapped binocular) and just sweeping around. Not even botherering to identify what I see. I'm always surprised and the number of objects that pop into view. Really helps keep the mojo alive

Mirror box much darker now nice work. Did you make your whiffle trees? Been thinking about making an cell for an EQ mounted newt, not sure if 3D printed whiffle trees would be rigid enough

These are very nice Neil. Conditions have been awful for me too recently, we really need that high pressure back. Though saying that D.Peach has been getting sone great saying last few days... might have to move to the south coast.

Nobody takes the vat off the new purchase price when selling used stuff here. The new price of the ep is £810 and that's that, no avoiding the vat. The used price is £600 and that is £210 saving on new. Plain and simple.

Thanks Simon, I don't usually process Saturn without an IR luminance and didn't get a chance to capture any last night but I'm quite pleased with just the colour capture... might skip the IR more often!

Very nice! The big old Meade is still paying its way

Yup that is physics. 1/10th of a wavelength of green light PtV is smaller than 1/10th of a wavelength PtV of red light (55nm vs 65nm). Testing in red is a cheap trick to make optics look a bit better than they are imo (unless you're building a specialist infra-red scope 🤷‍♂️)

If you ajve the money I'd go for the 150p Virtuoso. The goto functionality will really help you find things in the sky, and the motorised tracking helps alot when viewing the planets and the moon at high magnifications. I recommend you pick up a cheshire sight tube as well to align the mirrors (something that needs to be done every now and then to maintain the sharpest views). https://www.firstlightoptics.com/other-collimation-tools/astro-essentials-cheshire-collimating-eyepiece.html Id also pick up a couple of nicer eyepieces, the ones they come with are OK but not great. The included 25mm is not bad for wide field views. For higher power views in get couple of these ones, maybe a 12mm and a 8mm, and also the 2x barlow (which doubles the magnifications of any eyepiece used with it). You would then have 25mm, 12mm, 8mm, 6mm (12mm and barlow), 4mm (8mm and barlow).https://www.firstlightoptics.com/bst-starguider-eyepieces.html

Thanks Neil, I did add another 18mm 1.25" nosepiece extension behind the barlow lens so should be getting a bit more FL. Not sure how much yet. Yes I do see the bight patch on the globe too. I usually process the globe and rings separately but didn't bother with this data as I thought it was too poor to bother. I was quite pleased to pick out the blue southern polar hood though I think that's come out quite well.

Most scopes will only show Uranus and Neptune as small bluish discs, they look just like stars at low magnifications but at higher magnifications you can tell they are planets. Pluto will always look just like a dim star in any amateur telescope.

Hi and welcome to the forum. If you want something cheap and good you can't really do worse that a Skywatcher Heritage 130p. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/heritage/skywatcher-heritage-130p-flextube.html This scope will show you Jupiters cloud bands and the great red spot, plus Saturn's rings, moons and the Cassini division. It will also work well on deep sky objects. It is very portable and easily transported to observing sites with darker skies which really helps with the deep sky targets.

Hi Bob, welcome to the forum. Sounds like you have some nice kit, will work well on your star adventurer if you can get out to dark skies. Just FYI astrology is most definitely NOT the right term....that's what Mystic Meg does! 🤣 We do astronomy (or we try to at least)

Got set up last night for a very brief session, got cut short by clouds and a bit of rain. Only managed 3x90s captures of Saturn with the 300p and QHY462c (Baader L filter). Wanted to capture some IR too for an L channel but didn't have time. Seeing was poor with high jetstream speeds. Stacked best 5% of each video then derotated them together which produced a reasonable result. Pushed the saturation a bit on this one. Maybe a bit too much.

Nice video, I like your production. Just a note on PIPP, when you use the quality weighting function PIPP will duplicate the best quality frames and add them to the video so that the video you loaded into AS3 actually had 70,000 frames, not 40,000. PIPP took the best 40k from the original capture and then duplicated the best 30k of those and added them into the output to create a monster 70k frame video which you loaded into AS3. This has the effect of greatly increasing your file size and processing time for no gain. As the extra frames are duplicates of existing frames they have no effect in the stacking process.

I must say your website is brilliant (on my laptop and only just noticed the link in your sig - I usually use a mobile device). Love the way youv'e presented single subs alongside the finished images, and the sliders to compare. We may have even briefly met as I went to the planetarium at we the curious a lot (when we could)

Good plan 👍 I would say that if you can see definite atmospheric dispersion on the preview screen whilst capturing (blue fringe up top, red fringe at bottom) then you might well see some benefits to using an ADC, but it wont be huge and the use of the ADC can be tricky. You will probably get larger improvements from just practising to be honest. Maybe once you have everything nailed down and you reach the point where you're not improving any more then add an ADC into the mix to chase those extra details.

8" f/12 Classical Cassegrain

That's a really nice image, I'd be happy with that. Yup all stars, there are a LOT of stars out there! In terms of improvements, I'd say that you could probably get longer than 20 secs when using a Polarie and a 135mm lens... Concentrate on getting the PA as good as you possibly can you should be able to go for a couple of mins exposures at least. Also shoot in RAW format not jpeg.

Ok so to me, looking at your image on the other thread, the field illumination looks pretty good, even without flats, maybe a little darker in the top corners but flats will sort that and I'd leave the secondary alone. The stars showing signs of coma all pointing away from the lower right, and it gets worse as you move towards the upper left. How I'd interpret this is that the light cone from the primary is not centred on the sensor (i.e. the primary collimation is out) and the centre of the light cone is somewhere off to the bottom right. You will need to tweak the primary collimation to bring the centre of the light cone back to the centre of the sensor. There may be some issues with CC spacing too but that will be easier to diagnose once collimation is sorted. The best way to do the primary collimation is to aim the scope/camera at a star which is close to your intended target in the sky, defocus the image of the star slightly so you can see the classic donut shape and tweak the primary collimation screws to get the donut concentric. Keep the image of the star in the middle of the sensor whilst you do this (each adjustment to a collimation screw will move the star and you'll have to move the scope to bring it back to the centre). By dong it this way you are collimating through the imaging train, i.e. aligning your primary to your camera sensor, which is exactly what you want for imaging. You can also do it with a cheshire eyepiece but there may be some error creeping back in when you swap out the cheshire for the CC/camera. The key thing is that the primary mirror can shift, as can the focus drawtube (droop/sag) and the primary collimation will change slightly as you point the scope to different parts of the sky as the mirror moves slightly in the cell or the focus tube hangs differently. It is very difficult to engineer a mirror cell that holds a mirror lightly enough to not change the figure (pinching) but firm enough to prevent this mirror shifting during changes in scope position. This is why you ideally want to collimate the scope whilst it is pointing at your intended target.

Sorry I meant the AP images you captured with the scope, what what it in those that suggested collimation was out? That might guide you in what to look for

What was it in the images that suggested a collimation issue?

Looks pretty good to me, but I cant really see the 'dot-in-the-donut' cheshire view in the last image though as it is out of focus - that is the primary collimation and is the most critical one to get right. It's worth doing a few iterations from start to finish.... so when you get to your last photo (primary collimation), start again with the concenter and go right through up to primary collimation again, the errors at each stage will tend to get smaller with each iteration I find.

Advanced warning: I know next to nothing about RCs! But to me the upper right corner looks pretty good, the bright yellow star looks nice and sharp/round. The stars lower right and on the left all have aberration that are pointing away from this upper right zone. I'd say the zone of good collimation is there in the upper right and the collimation needs adjusting to be brought back to the centre of the field?